


The Newest Addition

by unholygrass



Category: Criminal Minds (US TV)
Genre: Baby, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Family, Family Feels, Pregnancy, Team as Family, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-03-02
Packaged: 2019-03-23 17:28:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13792581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unholygrass/pseuds/unholygrass
Summary: Maeve and Spencer are having a baby, and the team may be even more excited about it than the parents-to-be. Baby Reid enters the world surrounded by love.





	1. Beginnings

**Author's Note:**

> Because I want Reid to be a dad and I ship Maeve and Reid ridiculously strong. This will be more than a oneshot. I plan to write baby Reid growing up because I have several plans for him.

It’s Hotch who finds him after the call. Reid is leaning against a table in the conference room in Springfield, Missouri, his elbows resting on the surface while his fingertips are pressed against his lips. His eyes are wide and staring unseeingly at the stained wall in front of him, and Hotch doesn’t know how to describe the look on his agent’s face other than pure surprise. He’s concerned for a moment, but Reid doesn’t look necessarily upset. Hotch glanced behind him before further making his way into the room. 

 

Reid does not take notice of him. 

 

“Reid?” He asks tentatively, placing the files in his hand down on the table in front of the other agent. 

 

Reid’s eyes snap to him, still impossibly wide. After a moment he blinks several times. Hotch notices the phone near the kid’s hand. 

 

“Everything alright?” 

 

Reid opens his mouth. Closes it. Opens it again. 

 

Hotch briefly wonders if he’s having a stroke. 

 

Reid moves his fingers from his mouth and speaks all at once. “Maeveispregnant.” 

 

It takes Hotch a moment to decode whatever the hell just came out of his agent’s mouth. 

 

Then all at once he understands. 

 

_ Maeve is pregnant. _

 

Their youngest team member, Spencer Reid, the kid who launches film canisters across the office and curled into a ball on the jet couch was going to be a  _ father _ . 

 

“Maeve is pregnant.” Hotch repeats, and then before he knows what’s happening a smile has split his face in two. 

 

Reid expects Hotch to clap him on the back or shake his hand. He does not expect the older man to tug him against his chest and squeeze him firmly. It’s warm and such a positive reaction that suddenly Reid has gone from shocked to  _ esatic _ . 

 

“I get to be a dad!” The words spill from his mouth like honey and are muffed against his boss’s shoulder. Hotch releases him and holds him at arm's length, a rare grin on his face. It’s in that moment that Hotch knows Spencer Reid will be a fantastic father, knowing so from nothing but his words alone. 

 

He  _ gets _ to be a father. Reid is feeling honored, not burdened by the opportunity to have a kid. Hotch feels a familiar sensation of pride swell in his chest. Reid was 27 years old,  _ very _ recently married, and was about to start his very own family. Their gangly hesitant genius had grown up right in front of their eyes and turned into a proud man ready to make his mark.

 

“When did she call?” Hotch asks, picking up his files once more. They’re in Colorado, thousands of miles away from where he’s sure Spencer would like to be most: with his wife at their apartment back in Virgina. 

 

“Just a minute ago. She said she was too excited to wait for me to get home.” Reid picks his phone up off the table and holds onto it for a moment before slipping it into his pants pocket. Hotch can’t help but think that Spencer is glowing. The case was long and tiresome, and they had all started to wear down from lack of sleep and overrun by theories, but one phone call from Maeve had struck a match for Spencer and lit him back on fire. He was nearly vibrating with energy, and Hotch knew that the second the other’s came back from canvassing they would notice the difference. 

 

All at once Reid has turned away from him and darted out of the conference room and into the extra interrogation room where they had set up camp. “We need to solve the case!” echos back to him, and Hotch feels almost like maybe he’s been relit too. 

 

\----------------------

 

Sure enough, two hours later, the others call out Reid on his strange behavior almost immediately. The words explode out of Reid’s mouth the same as before, like he still can’t quite believe that what he’s saying is true. He gets rattled around by Morgan who wraps his arms around him and shakes him back and forth, and kissed on the cheeks by Rossi. After ten minutes of watching the kid get bombbarded with questions from the ladies, Hotch rescues him by gently bring in a reminder that they still have a case, and they manage to get back to work. 

 

\----------------------------

 

It takes them another three days to wrap up the case, and Reid endures the teasing that he knows will not cease until the baby is born. 

 

Baby. 

 

_ They were having a baby _ . 

 

When he gets home it’s almost two AM, but he can see before he enters that the lights are on inside. Maeve is asleep on the couch, curled up against the cushions with her arms wrapped around her stomach. She’s wearing his robe and socks both, and the sight of her with her hair splayed out on the armrest and her makeup already removed makes warmth blossom in his belly and ooze out into his limbs. All at once he’s overwhelmed and in love and maybe a little hysterical from lack of sleep on the last case but he manages not to wake her up even when he almost knocks over the entrance table with his go bag. He puts down his luggage in the bedroom and changed into sweats before going back to where she was sleeping. 

 

Spencer slipped his hands beneath her and with a huff of exertion leaned forward and then back and used the momentum to bring her to his chest. He stumbles slightly, barely managing to keep his balance. He wasn’t the strongest person, he certainly knew that, but he had carried Maeve before and while he knew he didn’t look like much, he could hold his own. 

 

Mostly.

 

She stirs and wraps her arms around his neck, recongizing him and tucking her face against his collarbone. Reid has to stop where he is, standing in the middle of his messy living room, surrounded by half-read books and forgotten coffee mugs, the low light of the side table lamp spilling over them, Maeve heavy in his arms, and take a deep breath. 

 

There had been happy moments in his life. Graduation, his mother’s lucid days, being accepted by the BAU team. Reid was content with his life, and happy with the work he did, even if it did not bring him  _ joy _ necessarily. The overwhelming good moments were few and far between, but he had learned at a young age to find happiness in the small things, such as sharing a drink with Morgan or watching movies in Garcia’s liar with Prentiss and JJ. 

 

But never before, had Spencer Reid ever found himself so deeply content. 

 

Maeve shifts against him, curious as to why they’ve stopped, and he kisses her forehead before he heads back to their room. It would have almost have been a perfect moment except that he turns too abruptly and smacks his shoulder into the wall, along with her legs. She jerks in surprise, a sort of startled yelp coming from her as he startled forward, knowing with certainty that they were going to fall, and aiming for the bed. They make it barely, fueled by momentum, and the bed shifts with their sudden weight. She’s laughing next to him, her arm still slung around his neck, and he thinks maybe it’s perfect after all. 

 

\--------------------------------------------------

 

They learn that she’s due in March, and he does everything he can to make it to as many of her doctor visits as possible. Whereas he used to have no problem leaving town at the drop of a hat, it now bothers him slightly, and he’s faced with missing her appointments and sleeping with the fact that should something go wrong she would be alone. 

 

They’re partners for a reason, and it’s because she’s just as strong as him, and she does a good job at reassuring him that she’s okay— just as fine alone as she was before. 

 

But it’s obvious that she misses him, and he misses her too. 

 

But he loves his job, and he’s not sure if he could do anything else without feeling empty, and she knows that. So they make it work, and they love what they have. 

 

\--------------------------

 

They’re not a perfect couple by any means, and as all couples do, they fight. Some days the pregnancy hurts and makes her ache, and some days the job picks away at his mood until he’s snappish and then on worse days they collide and take their hurts out on each other. It’s always stupid things, and they don’t always manage to apologize to each other, but they always come back together and they always sleep in the same bed. 

 

\-------------------------

 

Spencer’s anxiety about the future shows through exactly as could be expected from him. He buys over twenty books about parenting, births, and pregnancy, despite knowing almost all of already. He reads almost all of the research papers that exist on the best way to care for children, and he brings it up at any possible moment in conversation. The team is used to this, and so is Maeve. He’s done it before, and it only takes a gentle reminder to snap him out of his baby info dumping. In a sense, it’s his latest hyperobsession, having replaced Bell’s theorem the moment she had called to tell him.  

 

She’s nervous about being a mom, and he’s nervous about being a dad, but they are also too excited to fall too deeply into the type of self doubt that could do any real harm. 

\--------------------------

 

In January they learn that they’re having a baby boy, and they all go to Rossi’s house to celebrate. She’s used to his team now. Their odd tendencies and their histories etched in her mind, and Maeve has accepted them as her family now too. She’s learned that she can talk to Garcia effortlessly about anything, and through her friendship she earns herself a periodic text linking her to a funny video or adorable animal (“It reminded me of you!) and therefore another reminder of  _ Yes. This is right. This is all so right.  _

 

JJ is her best source of information, and at some point Maeve finds herself asking JJ more questions about motherhood than she asks her own mom, and she wonders when the hell that happened. She brings it up to the other woman at the BBQ, and JJ just laughs and hands her another glass of lemonade,, saying she was honored and then lowering her voice to tell her that she couldn’t be happier to have gained a friend like Maeve. 

 

Prentiss is a quiet sort of presence in her life, always with them and occasionally bumping shoulders with her to share a quick joke and a smile. There’s a fierce protectiveness that lingers around her, and while there’s not much reason for it, Maeve feels safe when she’s around her. When she recognizes the feeling it seems ridiculous- of course she was safe in a backyard surrounded by seven FBI agents, but the feelings is extra strong around Prentiss. She accepts it for what it is and tries not to question it too much. 

 

Jack and Henry are there, squealing as Spencer tricks them into thinking he’s made a quarter disappear, and then the three of them are running, Jack and Henry chasing her husband around the yard as quickly as their short legs will let them. They all three come back with grass stains, Spencer looking far more sheepish than the other two. 

 

She’s been accepted by her husband’s family just as quickly as hers had accepted him, and while she sits at the table in that backyard with lemonade and laughing and a baby below her ribs and the love of her life’s hand in hers— she realizes that she’s home. 

 

\-------------------------

 

They are given a crib by Maeve’s friend from college, but it’s heavy and cannot be taken apart and the only way it fits in their building’s elevator is to make it ride alone. The picture of the crib showing up unaccompanied on their floor makes Morgan laugh, and between Morgan and Reid they manage to wrestle the stupid thing into their nursery. He stays for dinner and when Maeve admits that she had always wanted a swing instead of a rocker, Spencer’s eyes light up like candles. He disappears out the door for several minutes, which leaves her and Morgan to make ridiculous assumptions about where he might of gone to. 

 

When he comes back he announces that he dropped by the landlord’s apartment, and that he had already gotten approval. 

 

Unfortunately, while making and hanging a swing seems simple enough they don’t know how to find a stable place in the ceiling to start. 

 

So they call Hotch.

 

\----------------------------

 

They paint the nursery a pale yellow, and the write crib doesn’t completely match the dark changing table, and they would like to hang a name on the wall except that they cannot for the life of them pick a name, but it’s already full of toys from their families and there are three beautiful homemade quilts that are draped throughout the room. The curtains have ducks on them and the bedding is blue and maybe it’s not a masterpiece of interior design but it’s warm and cozy and Maeve is absolutely in love with it. When she tells Spencer she can already call it her favorite room in the house he wraps an arm around her and suggests adding a bookcase. 

 

The swing is already by far her favorite part of the room. It’s made of rope and cushions hung on a large C frame that is at an easy height for her to get in and out of. It’s heavy enough that it moves without too much pushing but too heavy to go too far. Spencer puts several blankets on it and one night she goes into the nursery to add a few decorations and makes the mistake of sitting down in it, because she’s pregnant and tired and it just lolls her to sleep before she even thinks about standing back up. 

 

\-------------------------

 

By some blessing by the gods, she goes into labor when Spencer is in town. Hotch drives him to their apartment where she’s waiting with her bags packed, and while they all know that Hotch didn’t necessarily need to be there, no one says so. They’re first time parents and Reid’s hands are already shaking. His presence there calms them both, and gives Reid extra reason to hold onto his composure. 

 

The labor lasts twenty hours, through which the team drops by and visits for hours at a time, making them promise for updates once they’ve left. Her mother is there the entire time, and her father listens to Spencer talk about baby names for an entire hour. She smiles despite the pain at the sight. Spencer was nervous, and his nervousness always led to ramblings. Normally she was his main target, and it was a duty she enjoyed. There was peace in listening to him and the information he had— now however, she isn’t the best company, drugged and short tempered, so her father takes him instead. Not once does he seem annoyed, and not once does he try to escape or change the topic. Her heart swells infinity, and when she starts crying she blames the hormones and being overwhelmed. 

 

Twenty hours of labor mean nothing, because in the end they take her back for surgery anyway. She wishes they’d made that decision nineteen hours ago. Spencer accompanies them, and when the doctor warns him that some of the procedure could be nauseating, she can’t help but smile and slur that she’s sure he’s seen far worse. The nurses she’d been conversing with earlier inform the doctor that Spencer worked with serial killers, and the doctor stopped warning him after that.

 

She’s too far out of it to notice when they hold a screeching bundle of something slimy by her face twenty minutes later, but when she wakes up her husband is there, practically vibrating with excitement to show her their son. Everything is a little blurry around the edges, but she can tell that they’re alone besides two nurses that are adjusting an IV and readying cradle. 

 

She’s naked but covered by a blanket, and holding her son for the first time is a sensation so natural that tears slip out of her eyes and there’s probably snot too and before she knows it she’s full blown sobbing, overwhelmed and so impossibly happy. 

 

It must be Spencer cleaning up her face because a moment later and he’s there too, and she’s practically wrapped up in the love of her lives and her family that she feels no pain. 

 

\-----------------------

 

People visit in rounds, and they all ask for a name, and they never have one to give them. They have a list, but it wasn’t shrinking. Abu? Amory? Maybe Ben. No Calvin. What about Ralph? 

 

In the end it is Jack Hotchner who decides. He comes in with his father after school lets out, and doesn’t need an invitation to walk right up to the bed and pronounce his love for the new baby while simultaneously calling the baby an ‘it’. On impulse Maeve asks Jack if the baby was Edgar or Cooper, and when Jack leaned over and said Coop firmly, they decided that was as good as it was going to get and signed the birth certificate. 

 

And thus, baby Cooper Edgar Reid joined their family. 


	2. Revelations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first few months.

She runs a fever after the birth, and the drugs make her woozy in ways she wasn’t expecting. For a solid thirty minutes she sits against the raised hospital bed and clutches Spencer’s hand, so sure that she was about to throw up that even though she’s dying of thirst she doesn’t drink anything for fear that it will come back up. The incision stings but it isn’t too painful, though she’s sure that would change if she barfed.

 

Spencer is careful around her, and he looks very out of place in the hospital room, gangly and awkward dressed in his loose button down and cords. However when Cooper is put in his arms, he melts into the scene and suddenly he looks like the most natural thing in the world, and she supposes that he is. She knows the only history with babies that he had is Henry and Jack, but their baby fits in his arms perfectly and Cooper’s entire head fits impeccably in the palm of Spencer’s bony hand.

 

Cooper sleeps through it all, doesn’t even stirr when young Henry is given the privilege of sitting in the room’s rocker and carefully allowed to hold him. JJ snaps only a hundred pictures of the moment while Will talks to Spencer about lending them their toddler stroller when Cooper grows some.

 

At some point Cooper starts acting more like a baby and begins fussing, hungry and wanting nothing else but his mom. It’s a weird thought— Cooper wants his mom, _she’s_ his mom. _He’s hers._ She feeds him as much as possible, disappointed and a little ashamed when she has to take breaks because she’s sensitive and it _hurts._ JJ had told her it might be uncomfortable, but she hadn’t really taken it to heart. It makes her feel like she’s already failing. Spencer assures her that it’s normal, that he’s read about it, that she shouldn’t worry. He seems to understand though that she needs her mom, and he makes the call for her anyway.

 

Later she’ll fall asleep with Cooper resting against her chest, his warm face pressed against her collarbone, and it will be the most peaceful sleep she’s ever remembered.

 

\---------------------

 

Bringing him home is terrifying, because Reid realizes he doesn’t quite even know how baby seats work or how to even get it hooked into the car— but Hotch is there and shows him, tightening it down and making sure it’s level. He shows him how the buckle has to be square on the chest and how the seatbelt crosses beneath the whole thing. It’s a strike of reality that Reid wasn’t expecting. He knew that he was nervous and that he knew nothing about being a father. He had read all kinds of information about taking care of a baby and how to keep them safe and happy— but he had forgotten all the little things that he was doomed to figure out on his own. He’s excited to learn but scared of failing. Hotch seems to notice this, claps him on the back and simply tells him that every parent has been there.

  


On the drive home Reid realizes that Hotch was right. Billions of families had done this before— some far worse off than him, and they had survived and thrived. It would be hard and there would be mistakes, but he could do it. They both could.

 

\------------------------

 

In the first days they are given time alone to adjust to their new lives. Cooper doesn’t seem to realize the uproar he’s causing. He’s focused on sleeping and eating and not much else, despite his father’s attempts to introduce him to new toys.

 

Spencer doesn’t look anywhere near as tired as she does, and she finds herself jealous. He wakes up with her every time Cooper needs fed, but his bizzare sleeping schedule caused by his intense work means his body is already used to the odd hours, and even though it’s not his fault that still seems unfair.

 

Still though, he must have had a heart to heart with someone, because he works hard to make her life easier. She’d heard countless stories from her mom that while she loved her dad, he hadn’t been necessarily involved in taking care of Maeve when she was a baby. Apparently it had been a duty left to her mother alone while her father worked, and Maeve finds herself counting her stars that Spencer is not that way. He had already arranged to take three weeks off at work (“More if we need it!”) and while they’re not always on the same channel of thought, they do pretty well. He gets up as much as she does and he changes maybe _more_ diapers than her. He can’t feed Cooper unless she has milk pumped, so she tries to stay on top of that. He’s better at swaddling than she is but she’s better at putting him to sleep than he is, and somehow through all the chaos she finds that he truly is her partner in crime— their work is equal, and it shows. Cooper is just as attached to his father as he is his mother.

 

One night when Cooper is a week old she’s already in bed, exhausted from the day but content and warm in their bed. She’d showered and done laundry and Spencer was dressed in his favorite heavy sweatpants but he’s not wearing a shirt. He’s given Cooper a bath and put a diaper on him with a warm onesie. They were careful with keeping him warm— their apartment was drafty and often a little chilly, but despite his small size, Cooper did fairly well at keeping cozy.

 

She spends five minutes just gazing at them, contentment washing over her as she hears Spencer begin reciting _The Bronze Horseman_ from memory, the words spilling from his lips like honey as his voice softens, trying to distract Cooper into sleeping. It accidently works on her and she only wakes when she feels him slip under the covers and kiss her temple.

 

The apartment is awash with baby toys, boxes of diapers, laundry, and baby bottles, and she’ll have to wake up in four hours to feed Coop, but she’s happy listening to his breathing in his bassinet and the soft hitching snore of her husband.

 

\--------------------

 

Her parents visit periodically, and while it occasionally feels a little claustrophobic, she’s grateful that they’re there. Her mother is the master of babies, and she helps calm her when she has a billion questions (“Is his poop supposed to look like that? What if I _can’t_ get him to burp? Are you sure he’s not in pain? He’s not even awake how can you tell?”).

 

Spencer is hopefully awkward, but he’s loosening up around her parents finally. They’ve become used to all of hs quirks finally and they’ve learned that he can’t fully read social cues and that he never meant to be condescending, even when it felt like it. Spencer tries his hardest around them to be conscious of what he says and do, but it’s almost more relieving when he lets his guard down and acts like his normal self instead.

 

She catches her father watching her husband with Cooper one morning under the guise of reading one of the many newspapers Spencer subscribes to. Her husband has Cooper swaddled and was walking among their cluttered bookshelves, muttering about a absolutely nothing and holding him firmly to his chest. It’s refreshing to see the confident smile in his father’s eyes.

 

\---------------------

 

Eventually Spencer goes back to work, and she’s left alone with Cooper. For awhile it’s okay. She’s still in a daze from giving birth and spending time with her baby, but there are times when she feels broken. Sometimes Cooper cries for no reason, and she cannot calm him. She calls her mom and JJ and they help but it doesn’t do much good. She’s frightened by the ferocity of his cries, it sounds like he’s so upset that he’s choking, but eventually he cries himself out and sleeps. She had cried with him, but can’t stop herself once he does.

 

She’s lonely and exhausted by the time Spencer comes home from work, and he does his best to put her back together before she falls asleep. They make dinner together (“Can pasta burn? We should google that.”) and he tells her about his day. She relays her fears to him, and she puts them to rest. He often takes Cooper and bathes him, settling him into bed so Maeve can have time to read a book or shower or just lay on her back and stare at the ceiling.

 

He always tries to come home as quickly as he can, but his work is long and difficult, and some nights he comes home to find Maeve already asleep with their son.

 

\--------------------

 

He’s amazed by her natural ability with their son. She can hold him and make a bottle and talk on the phone and fold laundry all at once, whereas he was still hesitant to double task while holding Cooper. He was getting there, but she was already the master.

 

Cooper likes suckling on fingers and reaching for his shaggy hair. His dark eyes are often alert and trained on anything bright and moving. It takes very little to make him smile, drool spilling over his lips and soaking the front of the tiny onesie he wears. His father makes him squeal when he blows on his tummy and screech with joy when he’s plastered with kisses. His hair has started to come in dark and ramrod straight, sticking up at wild angles no matter what. Maeve tells anyone who will listen that that particular trait comes from his father, and the resemblance is uncanny.

 

\-----------------------

 

After a month, Reid notices that Cooper can’t hold his head up very well, despite the fact that he had reached that milestone. He laughs and screams like any baby, but he still behaves like his neck isn’t developing. Spencer downloads seven medical journals on the topic, but doesn’t tell Maeve what he’s found.

 

\-----------------------

 

After three months Cooper has grown and no longer is small for his age. His weight and height are strong and his personality is light and joyous. His hair has fallen out in the back from where he sleeps on it in the crib, but what he has remaining is tinted a deep auburn, wild and untamable. He suckles on anything put in his mouth and only wakes up once every night.

 

But he has not once made eye contact, and he does not follow objects. He uses visual guides to grab whatever he pleases, but sometimes he misses. He mirrors facial expressions with ease, but never meets the eye.

 

And he doesn't babble or try to replicate the sounds he hears. The doctor suspects autism, and connects them to a speech therapist and specialist.

 

She had already suspected, but having her fears written in concrete makes her stomach squirm for the entire ride home. There’s a brief moment of _oh fuck_ but she doesn’t see it as much of a change, though there is apprehension and terror for the trials and difficulties that Cooper will have to face that she had never considered. His life wouldn’t be as easy as hers. She worries for how far he would be able to grow and develop, and she wanted nothing more than to make his life as full of happiness as possible— to give him a better life than she had. It’s every parents dream after all, and her path to achieve it may have just gained more obstacles. She’s somehow less upset than she would expect herself to be. She’s sure there’s a reason for that buried in her brain somewhere that she can’t be bothered to dig up.

 

Spencer does not comment on it other than to respond to what the doctor is saying, and that concerns her, even though he does not outright mention that anything was wrong. They were close, and throughout the years she had chipped away at his tough exterior and taught him that he could lean fully on her and confide with her no matter what the subject. It was a big change in thinking for him, but he had begun to get used to the idea. Now however, he was silent, leading her to seek him out and pry into his mind.

 

She follows him to Cooper’s nursery one night when he does not join her in bed, and finds him perched in the swing, sitting in the dark clutching a purple duck that Coop had taken a special liking to. She slipped over to him and kneeled down in front of him, concern bubbling up her throat at his hunched appearance. She can’t see if he’s crying or not, but his voice is rough when he speaks.

 

“Is this my fault?” He whispers, his voice catching. He clears his throat to hide it, but her heart has already broken.

 

“Of course not.” She rushes, tucking her robe more securely around herself. She reached out and wrapped her fingers around his wrists. She hears him clear his throat again. “Spencer.”

 

“I— I was never ‘diagnosed’ so to speak, it just seemed— it just didn’t matter— but I know I’m on the spectrum, I mean everyone can tell—”

 

,“Spencer—” This time it’s her voice that breaks. She can’t stand to see him like this. He was _perfect_ , he loved them and he was so gentle and sweet and funny and _smart_ . He was strong and loyal and he was good man— _he was such a good man_ — he didn’t deserve any of the negative thoughts that she knew were swirling around in his head. Yeah, he was on the spectrum for autism, she knew that. It was just apart of who he was, and it didn’t make any difference to anyone who loved him, and it rarely made a difference in his life either.

 

“I didn’t think— I thought that the chances would be lower—”

 

“ _Spencer._ ” She says firmly, trying to stop his downward spiral. She squeezes his wrists. His eyes meet hers finally. She can see the storm swirling around in his mind, eating at the edges of his consciousness and tainting his thoughts. It always pained her to see him like this.

 

“Do you wish that we hadn’t had Cooper?”

 

“Of course not!” His reply is immediate, and she can see him open his mouth again, seeing where she was going with this and trying to protest, but she cut him off.

 

“Cooper is alive because of you, and because of me. Is it possible that his chances of developing autism were higher because of you? Yeah, maybe. But he wouldn’t have been born at all without those chances. Without you. And I know you don’t wish that he’s rather remain unborn just to spare him the challenges that might come with the autism.”

 

He shook his head minutely, and she catches a short glimmer on his cheeks from the light spilling into the room from the hallway.

 

“You know the research, and the advancements in technology. It won’t be easy, but he will get to lead a wonderful productive, _happy_ life just as he is.”

 

“I know that, it’s just— if it wasn’t—” She waits while he takes a deep breath to organize his thoughts. “There will be times when he suffers. Believe me, I know, and it will be because I passed it to him.” She nods, tears filling her own eyes. “And that thought alone hurts. A lot.” He finishes, looking away abruptly.

 

There was not a lot that she could say to combat that. He was right. It wasn’t his fault in any sense of the definition, he couldn’t control his genes or his condition, but just knowing that Cooper may end up suffering the discomfort that came with autism or have to battle the stereotypes that surrounded it was a heavy weight on his shoulders that she could not completely lift. It would be something he came to terms with only with time.

 

She leaned forward, releasing his wrists and cupping his face instead. His cheeks were hot with emotion and his eyes adrift with guilt. She kissed him firmly for a moment, then pulled back once she was sure she had his attention again. “I know it hurts— so we’re going to fight that hurt with everything we have to give him the best possible life we can. It’s like— think statistics right?” It was a tactic she used on him when he was struggling to process his emotions. Bringing everything back into a context he understood almost always helped. “We have two inverse graphs. The better life we make for Cooper, the better you’ll feel, and the better you feel, the better life Cooper will get with a dad who doesn’t feel responsible for his misfortune.” She gave him a little squeeze, and eventually he nodded.

 

“You’re right.” His voice sounded a little stronger, and he wiped the tears from his face clumsily.

 

She gave his arm a little tug. “Come to bed.” It doesn’t take much to persuade him, and after one quick check in the bassinet by their bed to kiss his son goodnight, she manages to pull him beneath the covers and curl up against him. She stirs a few times throughout the night, and while she notices that it takes him several hours to fall asleep, she peacefully notes that he was sleeping soundly eventually.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please review!


End file.
